ECUADOR: ‘Criminalisation Serves as a Deterrent, Seeking to Discipline Others’

 
CIVICUS discusses the rapid erosion of civic space in Ecuador with Gabriela Panchana, an activist, communicator and founder of the En Voz Alta and Rumbo Plural digital platforms.

Cockroach Insult Unleashes Biggest Challenge yet to Modi’s Repressive Rule

India’s strongman leader, Narendra Modi, has just been forced to do the thing he likes least: making concessions in response to protests.

GAZA: ‘There Are No Standards to Tell You What to Do in Conditions like Gaza’

 
CIVICUS discusses the state of civic and humanitarian action in Gaza with Ibrahim Arandas, a Palestinian activist and project manager at SPARK Gaza, a civil society organisation that provides humanitarian and psychosocial support.

International Criminal Court Under Attack

In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio pledged to ‘dismantle’ the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Trump administration intends to pressure states into quitting the court, threatening sanctions, travel bans, visa restrictions and ‘increased scrutiny’ of states that receive its funding. At stake is the court’s ability to stand with victims of the gravest of human rights crimes.

PARAGUAY: ‘Transparency Should Strengthen Democracy, Not Turn Criticism of Those in Power into a Cause for Suspicion’

 
CIVICUS discusses the challenges posed by Paraguay’s ‘anti-NGO law’ with Hugo González, executive director of the Paraguayan Network of LGBTQ+ Artists (REPAR+), a civil society organisation (CSO) that promotes the rights of LGBTQI+ people, which has joined the constitutional challenge against this law.

Nicaragua: End of the Electoral Illusion

On 19 July, the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution that first brought him to power, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega declared that his country would hold ‘no more elections’ so that the opposition could never again try to ‘seize power’. Just like that, he scrapped a presidential vote that had previously been pushed back to 2027, abandoning even the fiction of democratic legitimacy. The move changes little in practice, since no free vote had been possible for years. But it’s still revealing: a government that controls the army, the courts, the electoral machinery and the police, and will still not risk even a stage-managed ballot, is one that has lost confidence in its people.

INDIA: ‘The Cockroach Janta Party Brings Together Everyone Who Has Been Neglected for Years’

 
CIVICUS discusses India’s Cockroach Janta Party movement with Harshit Singh, a young activist, poet and storyteller who took part in protests in Delhi.

Burkina Faso’s Cancelled Democracy

Burkina Faso’s charismatic young military leader, army captain Ibrahim Traoré, has stopped pretending. In April, he declared that people should ‘forget about the question of democracy’ because ‘democracy isn’t for us’. When Traoré seized power in September 2022, ousting a leader who’d staged a coup earlier that year, he promised elections by June 2024. The junta broke that pledge, pushing any transition back to 2029. Now Traoré has confirmed he has no intention of restoring democracy. Instead, Burkina Faso’s military junta is tightening its repression, while working with neighbouring states to internationalise its dangerously undemocratic model.

CHINA: ‘The Ethnic Unity Law Means There Is One Acceptable Way to Be Chinese’

 
CIVICUS speaks about China’s recently implemented Ethnic Unity Law with Gulchehra Hoja, a correspondent for Reporters Without Borders and a Uyghur activist and journalist known for her reporting on human rights abuses against Uyghur people in China.

Female Genital Mutilation: Winning the Argument, Losing the Funding

Last August, a one-month-old girl in The Gambia bled to death after being subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that had been illegal in the country since 2015. FGM is a human rights violation, whatever the appeals to faith or tradition made in its defence, but now the Gambian Supreme Court is being asked to strike the country’s ban down. This is the second attempt in two years to make FGM legal again.

Guatemala: A Narrow Opening in a Captured Justice System

José Rubén Zamora, founder of elPeriódico, Guatemala’s now-defunct leading investigative newspaper, spent 1,295 days in detention before a court granted him house arrest on 12 February. He endured long stretches of solitary confinement in a military jail, held in near-constant darkness and subjected to treatment that six UN experts warned could amount to torture. His offence was simply doing his job. For decades, he exposed the corrupt dealings of Guatemala’s economic and political elites. Prosecutors are still trying to send him back to prison.

ALBANIA: ‘The Public Only Learns about These Development Megaprojects Once Construction Machinery Arrives’

 
CIVICUS discusses land grabs and environmental damage linked to a luxury coastal resort project with Eva Kushova, Director of Destination Management Organisation Albania, a civil society organisation that supports sustainable tourism in Albanian destinations, seeking to preserve culture and nature while maximising benefits for communities.

Communities vs. Datacentres

Few things unite Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters with the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, but datacentres are one of them. Across the USA, communities are joining forces across the political divide to oppose developments few want but governments seem determined to impose.

SERBIA: ‘We Are Becoming an Electoral Autocracy, a System Where the Government Cannot Lose’

 
CIVICUS discusses the prospects for elections in Serbia with Rasa Nedeljkov, Programme Director at the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, a civil society organisation that monitors electoral processes and the rule of law in Serbia.

Pride: Once Again a Protest

On the morning of 28 June, riot police sealed off Taksim Square with iron barriers and enforced bans on all weekend gatherings in Istanbul. Marchers pressed ahead anyway, re-emerging from side streets each time police dispersed them. By the end of the day police had detained at least 50 people, including a journalist. It was Istanbul Pride’s 24th edition, and the 12th year running that the authorities banned it outright.

MEXICO: ‘Our Call for Justice for Our Missing Loved Ones Must Reach the World Just as World Cup Goals Do’

 
CIVICUS speaks about efforts to use the 2026 FIFA World Cup to highlight Mexico’s enforced disappearance crisis with Ana Enamorado, a Honduran national who continues to search for her missing son in Mexico, and founder of the Regional Network of Migrant Families.

Peru’s Gridlock a Licence for Autocracy?

Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori has won Peru’s presidential runoff, narrowly defeating leftist Roberto Sánchez to become the country’s ninth president in a decade. She inherits a system so engineered for dysfunction that rather than making compromises, she may decide the concentration of power is her only means of survival. The constitution that created this trap was written by her father.

MEXICO: ‘The World Cup Is an Opportunity to Raise Global Awareness of the Crisis of Enforced Disappearances’

 
CIVICUS discusses Mexico’s enforced disappearance crisis with Angélica Orozco, a member of Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en Nuevo León (FUNDENL), a collective of relatives of disappeared people and people who support them. Since 2012, FUNDENL has been searching for the disappeared and documenting the human rights crisis.

Tunisia: Civil Society Criminalised

In May, Tunisian lawyer and journalist Sonia Dahmani was handed her second conviction of the year. Her latest sentence, a two-year jail term, came in reaction to her criticism of poor prison conditions. She previously received an 18-month sentence for calling out the government’s anti-migrant policies. Dahmani faces five more charges under a 2022 cybercrime law that criminalises the spreading of what it calls ‘false information’.

GHANA: ‘This Is Bigger than Lgbtqi+ Rights – It’s about the Kind of Society We Want to Be’

 
CIVICUS discusses Ghana’s anti-LGBTQI+ law with Leila Lariba, Executive Director of One Love Sisters Ghana, a community-driven organisation that advances human rights, social inclusion and wellbeing for Muslim LGBTQI+ people in Ghana.